Banana Oat Cookies

November and December were cookie months in my household.  With the thought of Christmas coming and a lot of time on my hands, I decided it'd be a good idea to try out as many cookie recipes as I could handle.  So I went to the library and got Betty Crocker's cookie cookbook.  There were dozens of wonderful sounding recipes but my budget, schedule, and stomach couldn't accommodate all the ones I wanted to try.  There's always an abundance of frozen rotten bananas in our freezer so I decided to make cookies using them rather than the standard banana bread way of getting rid of them.

I forgot to take pictures of the entire process but hey, they're cookies; nothing very epic. 

1 cup sugar

1 cup mashed very ripe bananas (2 medium)

¾ cup butter or margarine, softened

1 egg

2 ½ cups quick-cooking or old-fashioned oats

1 cup AP flour

½ tsp salt

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp ground allspice         

Heat oven to 350 F. Grease cookie sheet. Beat sugar, bananas, butter, and egg in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed or with a spoon. Stir in remaining ingredients.

Drop by rounded tbsp about 2 inches apart onto cookie sheet (or make balls). Bake 10 minutes. Cool 1 to 2 minutes; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely. Frost with vanilla frosting.

3 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup butter or margarine, softened

1 ½ tsp vanilla

2 to 5 tbsp milk

Mix all ingredients until smooth and spreadable. 

Frosting note: You could probably get away with only making half a batch depending on how badly you want diabetes.  I also used a can/jar of store bought frosting the second time I made these and it worked well also.  I wouldn't recommend store buying when you can make your own but it saves some time.

These are (I think I can safely add 'easily' here) my favorite cookies ever.  I love a good oatmeal cookie and these are just that.  Throw in a little banana for a slightly more complex flavor and also a potassium punch and top with extra sugar; you can't go wrong with these little gems!  These cookies were such a hit with everyone who tried them.  The second time I made them I added some chocolate chips to half of the batch.  I'm not a chocolate fan so I don't know how they were but my friends liked them a lot.